[Pride 2020] Buffy The Vampire Slayer's Questionable Representation

(Spoilers for Buffy the Vampire Slayer ahead)

Positive representation matters.

When you’re queer in middle America, you get a handful of stereotypes to look to for representation, and that’s it. It’s bad. It’s hard to even imagine what your life could even look like when all you see are straight people around you. When I was younger and figuring myself out, I went back in the closet and repressed multiple times due to seeing every single queer person I would connect to get killed.

Not just in fiction but on the news, too. We’re treated like we are a joke.

To stave off the dread I threw myself head first into whatever would distract me. I used to hang out on different message boards and had heard rumblings about a gay character on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It was more than a Sweeps Week thing, it was a multi-season permanent arc. I didn’t really have words for what I was feeling at the time, I just knew I wasn’t straight. Seeing SOME positive representation on Buffy changed all that; it gave me some stuff to research and discuss with the horror and Buffy community.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer began as a mid-season replacement for The WB Network in 1997 and ran until 2003. Buffy started out as a 1992 movie which spawned this TV series, a spin-off series, books, video games, board games, and comics. To this day, it is a massive multimedia empire. It follows the exploits of a woman known as the Slayer who hunts down the world’s supernatural beasties to keep them at bay, while still dealing with high school, college, a personal life, and family. The Buffy formula is literally applied to every single show on The CW right now.

During the fourth season of the series, one of Buffy’s friends, Willow, has a plotline where she begins to explore “magic” with Tara, a girl she met in her school’s Wicca group. From here, for about a season and a half, magic became synonymous with Willow exploring her sexuality as a lesbian woman. The TV series, books, and comics never backpedalled like many TV series of the era did.

Throughout three-ish seasons, Willow and Tara went through their ups and downs just like any couple. They got to know each other slowly, moved In together, and had growing pains together. Eventually magic stopped being a metaphor for queerness and became a metaphor for Willow’s spiral in magic addiction. In the end of season six, the show falls prey to one of the laziest tropes.

They kill one of the gays.

It always happens, the gays just never get to live or be happy. This unfortunate and outdated trope is lazy and mainly used in a couple ways, such as giving viewers a way to watch people suffer in exchange for giving the characters a decent story arc. Or, it’s used to bring a group of usually straight people together to rally behind a cause, essentially using the queer person’s death as a plot device. They didn’t even deal with Tara’s death afterwards, apart from one scene with only Willow. They didn’t even include the rest of the characters, who were supposed to be family. She was barely brought up again. Even with that outdated trope of a lesbian woman being killed by a stray bullet aside, it continued to be progressive. Willow didn’t go back to men, she continued on pursuing women. The last season of the show was the first to showcase a lesbian sex scene on broadcast television!

There was a tongue stud!

This relationship was important to me in a number of ways. By this point in my life, I’d found a lot of terrible queer representation, and I was happy that I finally got to see a relationship that didn’t end after a handful of episodes. There were nearly three full seasons of time to get to know the character. Seeing Tara’s death like all the other deaths I’d seen in media previously almost threw me back in the closet, but the one thing that helped me through it was to see Willow continuing on, surviving, and continuing to be herself. And through her other relationships and other loves—some long lasting, some quick flings—she remained a gay woman.

I was given a gift with this particular relationship. It showed me that not all gay people are going to die even if many do. It started me on a deeper journey of self discovery. The way I viewed the relationship was more than just someone watching a cute relationship form…it resonated with me on a deeper level.

When a trans person begins to realize they’re trans, it’s called cracking the egg. Buffy began the process of cracking my egg.

I realized the way I was viewing it was that of a homoromantic woman. It was in their relationship where I could see a reflection of myself as I wanted to be. It helped push me towards the inevitable hormone therapy, surgery, and self acceptance. A big part of my identity was birthed out of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and ushered into a larger world. I definitely wouldn’t be who I am without this piece of representation, questionable as it may be.

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